Football is Too Rough to be Called Soccer

As Americans, we are often embarrassed by foreigners who ask us to explain why we call one of our favorite sports "football," and why we call their football "soccer." There again, we are sometimes embarrassed by Americans themselves who ask us how our game of football got its name, considering the fact that most of the game consists of passing and running, rather than kicking.

How to explain these things is difficult, especially if we are watching a good game at the time the question is asked. I agree with the sometimes irritating remarks about football being mostly done with hands, rather than feet.

But in America, we didn't have much soccer going on in another era when football came into the picture. So within the context of American sports at that time in history, our football was the only major sport that did involve kicking.

Think of the other sports we had back then, by comparison. Baseball didn't allow much kicking at all, despite the fact that aggressive players used to try to kick an opponent out of the way when sliding into a base. This really was considered too rough for baseball.

As to basketball, if a player ever kicked the ball across the wooden court, he'd be subject to suspension or a fine.

Lets take golf. Who would kick a golf ball? Granted, there have been instances when irate golfers have thrown their golf clubs into ponds and, yes, even kicked their balls and stormed off the course swearing never to return. I asked one such golfer how to explain the origin of the name of the game "golf" and was told it was a process of elimination in that all the other four-letter words were already taken.

This did not help explaining the name "football" however.

Another sport, ice hockey, should be examined as also being a contemporary of football. For two reasons, football itself, and not hockey, should bear the name "football." First, hockey players use a puck, not a ball. Second, the player's foot is enclosed in an ice skate, making it awkward for him to take off the skate to kick the puck.

As a result, only one popular American sport could be called "football" at the time when football was invented. But if Americans had soccer when football came along, football would have had to have been called something else, perhaps "war," or "get the quarterback."

Now you know how to explain why we call it football instead.